I’ve seen these places and I can come up with a few options:
They make REALLY GOOD ramen, like really good which makes it worth the money. But ramen is so easy to make at home, even livening it up by tossing in some fresh veggies or egg etc that this is hard to be believe it is worth it. Just as a random comparison say burger places, no contest.
They are reasonable enough in price it is worth it(could be I dunno.)
It is just that culturally the customers want ramen and are willing to pay for it, but then I wonder why there are no ramen places in the USA or elsewhere for the most part.
Additional option: Lots of people in Japan live in places that don’t have kitchens/food-prep areas, and it’s culturally acceptable to eat dinner at ramen places (or get it and take it home).
Homemade ramen from scratch with real broth is exponentially better than what you get from the dried packets. What you’re asking is akin to saying “Why are there all these Italian restaurants serving spaghetti when I can buy a box of Kraft Spaghetti Dinner for a few cents and make it myself?”
Well then I’m kind of annoyed that ramen places serving real broth etc haven’t expanded outside Japan.
It was also my first hypothesis in my own OP But hey we had a thread here recently on spaghetti in restaurants and a lot of posters said they will NOT ever buy spaghetti.
Go on Netflix (or amazon Prime), find a show called Mind of a Chef, and watch the first episode. You will learn everything you ever needed to know about ramen in Japan.
As of a few years ago Houston had none, and there are tons of sushi places and even Japanese import markets and a large population of immigrants from basically every asian country.
I’m in Bangkok, Thailand and theres a sizeable Japanese population here, tons of good Ramen places. Go to any city that has a sizeable Japanese population and you’ll find Ramen restaurants.
As your attitude shows, the average westerner is not going to appreciate Ramen as something that can be a delicacy so they are going to want to go to a Japanese restaurant that serves Sushi or something else they associate with fine dining.
It bears repeating that the ramen you get at a good ramen shop isn’t the same ingredient you think of when you hear the word. They bear absolutely no resemblance to each other.
It’s like asking why people buy pasta in italian restsurants when ramen is so easy to make at home. Ramen in Houston
When I worked in Manhattan during the summer of 1981, my favorite place to eat was a ramen fast-food restaurant near my office. It was way better than any packaged ramen I had had before.
I never asked you if it crossed your mind, and your first hypothesis still didn’t allow for how different the products are. I was trying to make sure you understand that what you find easy to make at home isn’t actually what’s sold in Ramen shops.
Why do you care what was there two years ago? Are you time traveling?
Step 1: Fund enormously expensive marketing program (90%+ of working budget) to counter the notion that “ray-men” is something college students live on from a box under their dorm bed.
How consistently good are they? I mean how much of a guarantee do you have they extrude their own noodles fresh and make their own broth, versus someone running in the back and sneakily making some instant ramen.
Well if Americans could come to embrace sushi, they could embrace ramen. I’d advise not calling it ramen per se, and using big pictures to show it isn’t just noodles and broth but basically a full serving of meat and veggies in the bowl too.
varies from average to exceptional of course, there are cheap ramen places and there are classy ones. Here in Bangkok, they are cheap, 80-150 baht for a big bowl which is about $3.50-$7.
You can tell immediately the difference between instant and proper ramen. Any restaurant serving up instant would go out of business in days.
But hey we had a thread here recently on spaghetti in restaurants and a lot of posters said they will NOT ever buy spaghetti.